The most feared mafia boss in Chicago came home three hours early and found his housekeeper secretly feeding four identical little boys at the dining table no one had touched since his wife died

At 11:42 PM, the streetlights along Michigan Avenue flickered once, twice, and then plunged into total darkness.

A heavy, rolling blackout swallowed the magnificent mile, smothering the high-rise luxury hotels in pitch black. Emergency generators at the Drake Hotel kicked in three seconds later, casting a faint, eerie red glow across the grand marble lobby.

Before the private security guards in the lobby could raise their radios, the front glass doors blew inward in a shower of deadly crystal.

My men moved in like shadows, suppressed weapons whispering through the dark. Four guards went down before they even cleared their holsters. Viktor's team secured the lobby within forty-five seconds, jamming the elevators and locking down the stairwells.

I walked through the shattered entrance, dressed in black tactical gear, my rifle raised. Marco followed closely behind me with a breaching team of six men.

"Penthouse floor," Marco whispered, pointing toward the emergency access stairwell. "Vance's private contractors have established a defensive choke point on the 21st floor."

"Then we don't use the stairs," I replied coldly.

We pushed through the service doors into the central elevator shaft. Dominic had already overridden the automated brake systems from his mobile unit outside. I attached a heavy-duty climbing winch to the steel cable of the service elevator, hooked my harness into the line, and looked up into the dark, towering shaft.

"Up," I commanded into my radio headset.

The electric winch whirred to life, pulling Marco and me rapidly up the elevator shaft at forty miles an hour, bypassing twenty floors of heavily armed mercenaries waiting in the stairwells.

When the winch stopped at the 22nd floor—the penthouse level—I pulled a breaching charge from my vest, slapped it against the metal service doors, and blew the lock.

The doors blew inward with a sharp CRACK.

We burst into the grand penthouse suite. The room was opulent—floor-to-ceiling windows overlooking a pitch-black Lake Michigan, plush velvet sofas, and expensive artwork. Standing near a massive mahogany desk, surrounded by four panicked security guards, was Dr. Victor Vance.

"Fire!" Vance screamed, backing toward the balcony doors.

The four guards raised their weapons, but Marco and I were already moving.

I dropped to one knee, firing two double-taps that dropped the two guards on the left. Marco swept the right side, his suppressed weapon barking twice, dropping the remaining contractors onto the Persian rug.

In less than six seconds, the room was silent again.

Dr. Vance stood frozen, his expensive suit rumpled, his hands trembling as he stared at the barrels of our rifles.

"Moretti," Vance stammered, his silver hair messy with sweat. "Listen to me... you don't understand what you're dealing with! The Syndicate—"

I closed the distance between us in two long strides, driving the butt of my rifle violently into his stomach. Vance doubled over, gasping for air, before I grabbed him by the throat and threw him onto the heavy glass coffee table, shattering it into a thousand pieces.

I knelt on his chest, pressing the red-hot barrel of my rifle directly against his cheekbone. The smell of burning skin filled the air, but Vance was too terrified to even scream.

"Where are the rest of the boys' records?" I growled, my face inches from his. "Where are the backup samples?!"

"There... there are no backup samples!" Vance gasped, blood leaking from his mouth. "The four boys in your house... they are the only surviving subjects! The genetic matrix degraded during the cloning process! If anything happens to them, twenty years of research—billions of dollars—is destroyed!"

"Good," I whispered, my voice dripping with pure venom. "Because those four boys aren't research assets, Vance. They're my sons. And you used my wife like a lab animal."

"It was for the greater good!" Vance choked out, trying to grab my wrists. "The virus... the Syndicate is going to deploy it next month in East Asia! Without the boys' blood to create the cure, millions will die! You can't keep them hidden! They will hunt you to the ends of the earth!"

I leaned down, staring into his terrified eyes.